6 undergraduate courses in the 2026–27 Undergraduate Calendar.
INNOV 200Theory and Practice of Social Innovation and Impact0.50 units
This course will introduce students to foundational concepts and methods in social innovation and impact. Social innovation constitutes a range of activities across the world that seek to achieve lasting and positive social change at the systemic level. Students will engage in a series of classroom-based lectures, active learning exercises, and occasional experiential field visits to develop an understanding of how problems are identified and the unique response to such problems provided by the social innovation approach. Students will test out this knowledge by engaging in a team-based project that will apply what they have learned in the course to a particular problem that will be defined for them. Throughout the course, students will be given opportunities to develop their identities as change-makers, rather than knowledge-takers.
INNOV 201Social Innovation for Global Impact0.50 units
This course will introduce students to the global dimension of social innovation as a fundamental attribute of this approach. How social innovations respond to global challenges and achieve transformative impacts on a global scale will be the focus of this course. This course will use a mixture of written case studies, active learning, and experiential field visits with local social innovation-based initiatives to introduce students to the relationship between local activities and global challenges. It will enable students to deepen their knowledge of social innovation concepts and methods in a broader comparative and global context.
INNOV 300Case Studies in Social Innovation for Impact0.50 units
This course will introduce students to the process of researching and responding to social innovation challenges. To facilitate this learning, students will draw from a rich range of social innovation case studies and projects generated by the GreenHouse social incubator over the last decade. They will also draw from the broader secondary literature, to understand how social innovation opportunities are framed and operationalized in response to these challenges. Students will hear directly from GreenHouse alumni who will present on their initiatives. They will also have opportunities to visit and interact with a cohort of GreenHouse students creating their own social impact initiatives.
Prerequisites
Must have completed at least 1 of the following:
INNOV200 - Theory and Practice of Social Innovation and Impact (0.50)
INNOV201 - Social Innovation for Global Impact (0.50)
INNOV 302Measuring and Evaluating Social Innovation for Impact0.50 units
This course will introduce students to methods that can be used to measure the impact of social innovations across disciplinary domains. They will learn how to utilize a range of monitoring and evaluation methodologies and tools with a particular focus on impact measurements within constituent communities. Rather than taking a prescriptive approach, students will be encouraged to explore the limitations of these methods and understand the evaluation process as a dynamic process involving the evolving needs of constituencies as their circumstances change. Through this process, students will learn to integrate the evaluation process into the early development of their social innovation initiatives.
Prerequisites
Must have completed at least 1 of the following:
INNOV200 - Theory and Practice of Social Innovation and Impact (0.50)
INNOV201 - Social Innovation for Global Impact (0.50)
This course will build on the theory and skills gained in the prior INNOV courses. It will focus on the first of two initial stages in social innovation development, namely researching, understanding, and defining a particular problem. This will be accomplished by facilitating a deeper engagement with immersive social research and analysis skills, through experiential field visits and team-based active learning class-based exercises. The goal of this course will be to provide a coherent and credible basis to develop a social innovation-based initiative in INNOV 411.
Prerequisites
Must have completed at least 1 of the following:
INNOV300 - Case Studies in Social Innovation for Impact (0.50)
INNOV302 - Measuring and Evaluating Social Innovation for Impact (0.50)
This course will focus on the design and implementation of a response to the problem defined in INNOV 311. This will be done by working with students in teams and individually to design, test and build viable and impactful social innovation responses in iterations. Success in the course will not be tied exclusively to the successful launching of the initiatives themselves. Rather, the students will also be evaluated on the actual process of designing and testing the initiative and on how this process is articulated in reports and presentations to relevant stakeholders.